Thomas Kinkade
| Thomas Kinkade | |
|---|---|
Kinkade in 2005
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| Born |
William Thomas Kinkade III January 19, 1958 Sacramento, California, US |
| Died | April 6, 2012 (aged 54) Monte Sereno, California |
| Education | Art Center College of Design, Pasadena |
| Known for | Painting |
William Thomas Kinkade III (January 19, 1958 – April 6, 2012) was an American painter of popular realistic, pastoral, and idyllic subjects. He is notable for the mass marketing of his work as printed reproductions and other licensed products via the Thomas Kinkade Company. He characterized himself as "Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light", a phrase he protected through trademark but one originally attributed to the British master J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851). According to Kinkade's company, 1 in every 20 American homes owns a copy of one of his paintings.
Despite wide commercial success throughout his life, Kinkade is generally held in low esteem by art critics; his pastoral paintings have been described as maudlin and overly sentimental.
William Thomas Kinkade was born on January 19, 1958, in Sacramento County, California. He grew up in the town of Placerville, graduated from El Dorado High School in 1976, and attended the University of California, Berkeley, and the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. He married Nanette Willey in 1982, and the couple had four daughters: Merritt (b. 1988), Chandler (b. 1991), Winsor (b. 1995) and Everett (b. 1997), all named for famous artists. He and his wife had been separated for over a year before his death in 2012.
Some of the people who mentored and taught Kinkade prior to college were Charles Bell and Glenn Wessels. Wessels encouraged Kinkade to go to the University of California at Berkeley. Kinkade's relationship with Wessels is the subject of a semi-autobiographical film released in 2008, Christmas Cottage. After two years of general education at Berkeley, Kinkade transferred to the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.
In June 1980, Kinkade spent a summer traveling across the United States with his college friend James Gurney. The two of them finished their journey in New York and secured a contract with Guptill Publications to produce a sketching handbook. Two years later they produced The Artist's Guide to Sketching, which was one of Guptill Publications' best-sellers that year.
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